isn't this more beautiful | knj x f!reader
summary: you meet namjoon by accident. you fall for him without noticing. he slips in and out of your life at will, and you let him. but as you get closer, you start to wonder if he’ll always feel lonely, even with you by his side. or, a small story told out of order about time, loneliness, and knowing (or not) what we deserve
pairing: namjoon x f!reader
rating: explicit (18+ please)
genre: smut, angst, a lil fluff/hopeful ending
au: this is idolverse
warnings/tags: this is told asynchronously, so please know these little vignettes are not in chronological order. namjoon is a mess, but so is reader. she's an artist so there's one cliche on board already. they probably should talk more about important things but neither of them like feelings. smoking, drinking, smut, including unprotected sex, oral sex, exhibitionism, maybe like… mention of belly bulge kink, cumplay (kind of)
word count: ~6700
a/n: this is for the bts x beatles across the btuniverse collab hosted by my dearest @ugh-yoongi who also checked this for vibes. so did @the-boy-meets-evil in its early stages - thank you both!! banner + borders from @hobeemin (thank you so much!!!!). my member was namjoon (obv) and my song was eleanor rigby. idk how it really shows up in here except through vibes lol
you can find everything i write on ao3
Namjoon talks in unanswerable questions. He calls you at hours the owls don’t even see, talks quietly even though you’re not sure who he’s afraid of disturbing.
“Do you remember Bageundae?”
“Of course I do.”
“If you pressed your body against one side of the rock, and I pressed mine to the other, could you feel me?”
What you want to say: go to sleep, Namjoonie.
What you say instead: “I can always feel you.”
“Always is a funny word,” he replies. “Maybe worse than never.”
“Maybe?”
“You never know,” he says, and you can hear the sad smile he wears even from your desk across the ocean.
Sometimes, when people give the retelling of how they meet their “person,” it’s all sparks and fireworks and floods and worlds being turned upside down.
That’s not how you met Namjoon.
You met him softly.
You met him in a lazy river current and not a waterfall.
You met him like Sunday morning sunshine sneaking through cracks in defeated curtains.
You met him and the woodwind orchestra blew a quiet processional before the brass joined in much later.
You met him with a whisper. Literally.
“This is one of my favorites,” he said, a stranger whispering beside you. He wasn’t even talking to you—you remember being pretty sure about that. Just announcing it as an affirmation to himself and you happened to be there to be the unintentional recipient.
Now, you know it’s probably a foreshadowing of your whole relationship.
Then, you said, “It’s a misconception that you have to whisper in a museum. It’s not a library.”
Namjoon didn’t even give you the sitcom satisfaction of arguing with you about it. Just gave you an affronted side eye and huffed under his breath. Crossed his arms over his chest and planted himself further into the floor, staring at the Chung Sang Hwa in front of you.
To yourself, you rolled your eyes. It was almost like he was determined to outwait you, that there would be some satisfaction in it for him if you left for the next work on the wall before he did.
He didn’t know (yet) that you were as or more stubborn than he was. So, you both waited. You didn’t even know what you were waiting for, just that neither of you wanted to lose.
(And now look at you.)
It was near closing time on a weekday, and all of the special exhibits were crowded earlier, but the permanent collections were easy to be alone in. You were almost wishing someone else would walk in. Minutes passed, neither of you moved. In your periphery, you saw Namjoon stealing glances at you when he (presumably) thought you wouldn’t notice.
Finally, “This isn’t going to be some naver post later, is it?”
You were annoyed, not blind. You knew exactly who he was (or did you, you wonder now)—everyone in this country knew, his picture plastered over billboards and bus stops.
“Which story? BTS RM, weirdly stubborn art jerk, won’t walk away from painting first? Or, BTS RM casually checked me out at a gallery when he thought I wasn’t looking?” You didn’t look over at him, just raised your eyebrow in a challenge.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“So, you prefer the ‘jerk’ narrative?”
“I prefer to be left alone.”
And you still don’t know why you said what you said after that, as you turned to face him for the first time since he walked up next to you. “You probably don’t get that very often. Alone time.”
Namjoon looked back at you then, and it still wasn’t butterflies or choruses of angels. Instead, he just looked surprised and a little sad. “I don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” you replied. And you found that you meant it.
“Do you ever wonder,” Namjoon said, and again, you didn’t know if it was to you or to himself, “how it is you can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly lonely?”
You hadn’t. But you still thought you understood what he meant. “No, but it makes sense that you would.”
Namjoon laughed then, maybe a little bitter, maybe just nervous. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this,” he said.
“And yet…”
“And yet,” he agreed with a small nod.
The two of you were quiet again then, but not in a stand-off anymore. Behind you, you knew his manager was fidgeting, worrying that something was off. That you’d reveal yourself to be some sort of wild stalker or obsessed fan.
“It’s not personal,” Namjoon offered, like he could already read your mind.
“I know,” you conceded.
You started to walk away, ready to see a different painting, ready to not feel like you were doing something wrong by incidentally being in the same room as someone famous, when Namjoon stopped you. “He wanted to paint heartbeats, to give them a language, to let people see what all the emotions that fuel our hearts would look like,” he said. “Do you think it worked?”
Next to this person that you didn’t know but somehow you thought you might understand anyway, you nodded.
Next to Namjoon in a room so quiet you were sure you could hear the steady thrum of your heartbeat (or his, or both beating at the same time), you nodded.
Next to him, who you didn’t yet know would become Him, you nodded.
“Yeah,” you said gracelessly.
“Can you see it?” Namjoon asked.
“Which one?” you countered.
He shrugged, not breaking eye contact. “Aren’t love and hate and pain and pleasure all the same at the end of the day?”
Eventually, he will teach you that they are.
It starts with phone calls.
(Sometimes it seems it might end with one, too.)
Namjoon speaks like the shallow pools of blended color on a painter’s well-loved palate. There is no certainty. He uses gray words like “sometimes,” and purple ones like “maybe,” and the soft peach “don’t you think?”
“Morning, Namjoon-ssi,” you hum into the air, hoping you’re close enough to the microphone that you don’t have to shout.
“What if we were in Florence?” he asks in return.
“Then I would still be asleep, or you would be getting smothered with a pillow for waking me up.”
He laughs, not the bright one you know he saves for when there’s an audience, but a small one that bubbles up from his chest with a deep timbre. “So, in Florence, you and I are in bed together?”
You sigh into your (not Italian) pillow.
“Good morning,” he adds. “Can we speak informally?”
Your sigh turns into a smile you hadn’t asked for. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
You’ve been speaking for weeks. Namjoon is busy, you are not (at least, not in the same way, not to the same magnitude). You make a space for him in your life with much less consideration than you usually use with others. Or, maybe he just takes it.
“What are your plans for the weekend?” he asks.
“Same thing as all the other weekends.”
“Can I watch this time?”
“It’s boring.”
Namjoon pauses. “Does it bore you?”
“No, it’s what I love.”
“Then,” he says, in what you think is probably his typical fashion (at least with you, it is), “I think I might find it easy to love, too.”
“Oh, Namjoonie,” you tease, “I’m starting to think you find everything easy to love.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. This is a thing you’ve noticed about him. He’s serious in a flash. He’s jokes and teasing and talking to you about what ifs and what nots until suddenly he is very determined that he should say something meaningful. Or very convinced that you have.
“I want to,” he says. “I want my heart to be more full than my mind. It’s hard.”
“I know,” you say, even though for you, it’s not.
“I’m glad you don’t,” he says earnestly.
“Come see me on Saturday,” you say, deflecting. You can do this for him, you think. You haven’t seen him since the museum, but you’ve seen the pastel splashes of his words, the geometric lines of his heart, the post-modern dilemma he thinks he carries down deep. You’ve seen the important things, so you know you can give him the distraction he doesn’t know he needs.
“I think I will.”
You hang up in black and white.
Namjoon fucks like a surrealist. Shifts your body until you’re still recognizable in the mirror, but fundamentally different, too.
Pulls your hips up too high: Ernst.
Makes butterflies soar out of your mouth, gusty with your labored breath: Magritte.
Fucks you cross-eyed, spit dripping hourglass slow from your lips: Dali.
You thought he would be a talker, like he is on the phone. Thought he’d try and work through the freightliner of thoughts steaming through his brain. But Namjoon is all breath and whispers and sighs and moans and fragments of the pretty words he used to get you like this: bent over your worktable, chest smeared into cadmium red and titanium white. He talks, but it's oil paint instead of watercolor this time: thick and precise.
“Fuck, you look perfect like this,” he says, voice a little dreamy, slapping another pink-paint handprint onto your ass. You’re never going to get it scrubbed off your skin.
It makes you laugh, breathy and high.
You came first (and second) on his tongue. Told you to keep painting while he got underneath you, pretty on his knees, honest and plain telling you he wanted you.
“Want to see what art tastes like,” he said, cotton soft breath on your thigh.
“Silly,” you replied. “Does anyone fall for lines like that?”
“Doesn’t matter, don’t want you to fall. I told you to keep standing.” He’s smug when he licks across your core, startling you.
It went like that until your hand was shaking and the thick outlines around nameless figures on the canvas shook with you.
“Pretty painter, taste as good as you look,” he paused to say. You moaned when he fucked his tongue into you, clenched around it, wanted to be greedy, wanted more, wanted everything. “Sound even better,” he added, chin slick, eyes sparkling.
After you came, he didn’t stop. When your paintbrush fell to the ground, he doubled his efforts, two fingers sliding inside of you while he sucked your sensitive clit between his lips. “Come on, baby,” he said, “I know you have another one for me.”
Your hand gripped his hair instead of your brush, you chased the overstimulation instead of wriggling away. It felt right, somehow, to just take what you want, and Namjoon didn’t seem to mind. Moaned into your cunt when you fucked his face, holding him in place while your hips moved. A muffled, “fuck, please baby,” into your skin when you pulled his hair just to see what it would feel like. Lips curved into a grin when you rocked against him through your second orgasm.
And now, he reaps the benefits of his efforts. You’re pliant beneath him, fucked out and pleased, easy and eager as he slides his thick cock in and out. You watch him carefully in the mirror, you see his focus on where he thrusts inside of you, his awe when you clench around him and pull him just a little farther in. You see him grin when he slaps you, telling you he knows you’re watching, asking if you want more. “A greedy little thing,” he breathes. “Think you want more? Think you want me to fuck you harder, want my cock in you so deep you can feel it in your stomach?”
You feel stupid with it, nodding in agreement, mouth open and drooling onto your worktable while he fucks you to a third orgasm.
“You fuck me so good. Such a big dick, gonna feel you all week, Namjoonah.”
“You should paint this,” he says, slowing his thrusts. “No one’s ever looked as good as you do taking my cock.”
“No one?” you ask, suddenly a little desperate for the praise.
Namjoon bends to kiss the back of your neck, lets his lips mark a pathway down your spine that his fingertips follow. He’s so deep inside of you, hips grinding slow against your skin. When he reaches your waist, he grips and pulls you into him even closer.
The space between you (barely there to begin with) bends to his will: Carrington.
“Nobody, baby,” he whispers his first certainty to you, fingertips teasing between your thighs now, careful where you’re still too sensitive, but wordlessly asking you to give in, to give more.
“I’ll give you anything,” you say in response to a question you don’t think he’ll ask as he starts to circle your clit, pulls almost all the way out of you and fucks back in harder than before.
“You’ll take even more,” he says, and he comes inside of you, hips stuttering unsure, a bassline under the clear melody of his words.
Lazy, you lie face up together on discarded canvas, forgotten starting points of ideas you hadn’t intended to complete. Unabashed, you have a knee up so your thighs don’t tack together with the mess you’ve made. Namjoon talks about nothing, blows smoke in halos above your heads and offers you the cigarette careful between his long fingers. You don’t smoke, but you hold it anyway, watching him, carding the fingers of your free hand through his hair as he stares at his cum leaking out of you, catches it on the tender part of your thigh and wipes swirls and squares onto the canvas around you.
He finishes the thoughts you began before you even knew him.
“Tell me a story,” you whisper roughly into the air, hoping he can hear you through your shitty phone microphone.
It’s early, that sacred pre-dawn you save for yourself (and now, somehow, for him) and you’ve woken up from a shitty sleep and a worse dream and couldn’t stop yourself from calling him back when you saw you’d already missed a call from him.
“It’s late, baby.”
You let out a puff of breath, Namjoon laughs almost silently at you.
“Please?”
“You don’t like books,” he says, almost a tease. It’s true. You like them conceptually, but you told him you don’t feel like you have the patience sometimes. That you want to give them energy you don’t have.
“But I like stories.”
“FIne.” Even his sigh is fond. You like him like this so much—easy, willing, teasing but still giving in eventually.
You fall asleep fast, the first words you hear are the last. “Once upon a time…”
When you wake up, you have messages from him. A whole lot of them, a whole story written out in your Katalk chat. A love story, sort of, one where they’re star-crossed and destined but always just a little too far apart. It ends with a “maybe” instead of a “happily ever after.” You don’t even let yourself think about that too much—it’s perfectly him—a little drama for the sake of it, a little sadness to make the joy feel better.
Your world is tiny. A firefly in a sky full of bold, bright stars. It is you, in your studio, alone. It is you with your friends, it is you getting a cat so you have someone to talk to when your friends aren’t around.
For Namjoon, it expands. A firefly to a star to a burning red giant.
Still, it feels small when you’re inside of it. It’s you with your friends, it’s you with Namjoon in your studio, it’s Namjoon gently stroking your cat’s fur while he talks to himself and you paint.
It’s difficult to describe, but when you’re with him, you either have his full attention to the extent it’s overwhelming, or he seemingly pays no attention to you or what you’re doing. Just works on whatever he’s working on while you paint, speaking to you because he knows you won’t answer.
On one of the nights when you’re together (but not at all), you finally ask. He’d let himself in around two in the morning and kissed the top of your head before he put headphones in and stuck his face into his notebook on the other side of the room. He likes to sit by the window so he can crack it open and blow his smoke out of it instead of into the room.
“Why’d you come tonight?”
“I wanted to be near you.”
“I don’t think you’ve even looked at me.” It’s not an accusation, just an observation. You like that Namjoon will know the difference, you like that he’s hard to offend, and doesn't mind when you speak plainly. Gives you plain answers in return (usually). You stick the small paint brush you’ve been using sideways in your mouth and grab a larger one.
“Baby, you’re all I can see lately,” he says, staring at the trails of smoke curling around the outside of the window pane.
You laugh around the red-tipped paint brush you’re biting down on, a pause for the cadmium to add a little white to the edges. Namjoon looks over then, snaps a picture of you with your eyes crinkled and your head thrown back, red oil threatening to drip like blood.
“Beautiful,” he says, looking at the picture before he goes back to writing.
There are more phone calls every time he travels for work. It’s the same routine. He texts you a photo of something he’s seen that he liked, and when you respond, whether it’s five minutes later or five hours, he asks if he can call you.
Sometimes they’re quiet, simple recountings of the things that have happened in his day or are about to happen in the next (timezone dependent), sometimes they’re ranting about the industry and the pressure and how he never thought about time until he realized he was running out of it. Sometimes he’s worked up in a different way, wants to see your face in pixelated halos while he comes on his own stomach, alone in a hotel room far away.
All of this, you let him take. It’s not completely sacrificial, by any means. You like to hear him talk, better than any podcast you’ve ever heard. You like to know what he sees—he’s touched parts of the globe you could only dream about seeing. You like that he never makes it complicated.
Never promises to take you there one day, never says he wishes you were with him.
You’ve been fucking in secret for a while when Namjoon wants you to meet his friends.
“Why?” you ask.
“Because I want you to see me, too,” he says. Simple and complicated at the same time. You’re afraid to ask why again, not sure if you want to know the answer. This is sex. It’s incredible sex that happens far more often than you thought he’d be able to make time for.
He shows up at your studio at odd hours of the morning (or is it still night?) and talks to you about all the frivolous things while you take each other apart. Rambles about Murakami while he fucks you, tells you about a Youngkuk he saw while you swallow his dick. Naked and sprawled amongst your paint and mess and half-done work leaning against the walls, he tells you a little about his work, too. Asks you about a painting he’d seen you working on—diligently adding splashes of blue, tells you about a song he wants to do the same thing to somehow. Asks you uselessly if color and sound are the same thing if you think about them too hard.
They are. It’s a thing you both know that you don’t think many others do. It’s one thing he’s sure about. You think he only likes you because you’re sure about it, too.
It’s incredible sex and pretty good conversations that happen at what most people probably think are strange times, but it’s not more than that. You can’t afford to get your heart confused, and he can’t afford to give you anything other than exactly what he’s giving.
(He can’t afford to give you what he does, but he tells you there’s no reward without risk.
“Am I the reward, then?” you tease.
Namjoon never answers you.)
But you don’t tell him no. You think this is a bargain you can make with your heart, you can ask it for temperance while you do this thing he wants, you can meet the people who are truly important to him without convincing yourself you’re counted amongst them. You can try, anyway.
So, on a rooftop in Hannam-dong, you sip whisky with a photographer friend of Namjoon’s while he stands behind you, an arm wrapped around your waist, and alternates between sucking bruises into your neck and smoke into his lungs.
“How’d you meet?” the photographer asks.
“Hoam,” Namjoon replies into your skin. “She picked a fight.”
You laugh, he laughs, the photographer laughs. It’s carefree and light—your laugh, your thoughts, your skin under Namjoon’s wandering lips. Your heart is holding up its end of the deal, you don’t feel anything but pleased to be there, pleased to have his attention again (still).
“Our Namjoonie likes a challenge,” his friend says.
“Our Namjoonie is a challenge,” you tease.
Namjoon nips at the thin skin between your neck and shoulder in retaliation (or to prove your point, you’re not sure). You yelp, turn in his arms, see him smirking before he goes to take another drag. Swiftly, you pluck the cigarette out from between his lips, stamping it out on the cement.
“Baby,” he whines, looking down where the cigarette is brown and white dust under your sneaker.
“Better things to do with your mouth,” you retort, pressing up onto your tiptoes and pulling his bottom lip between your teeth.
His mouth is ashy and yours tastes like peet, you’re sure. It’s filthy and a little cheap even though the cigarettes and the whisky and the lip balm he always wears were all expensive. Namjoon kisses like he does everything else: completely single-minded, treating the soft curves where your mouths meet as if they’re the edges of the world.
You walk him a step back until he’s flush against the wall and lean into him again, pressing your bodies together hard and your lips together plush. He’s hard in his joggers and it’s every last piece of self-control you have to not sneak your hand under his waistband and tease him until he’s leaking and begging to get inside you.
It wouldn’t take much.
Takes a lot out of you to not drop to your knees and choke on his cock where everyone can see, where everyone would know for sure for sure for certain that he’s chosen you for this for now for some reason. To not make him moan around your name while he comes down your throat, a different kind of concert.
Your hands stay in appropriate places while your lips beg for more.
He was right, something he said the first time you hooked up: you are greedy for him. But he’s just as bad for you, begging in your ear for you to let him take you home, for you to let him fuck you right here so everyone knows you’re his (right now, in only this way, for some reason that neither of you are willing to speak into existence).
You give in, no cares about who sees, it’s safe here with friends who would never betray him. You feel ever weightless against his body, whispering, “Yes, come on Joonie,” you say. “Need your cock. Need you.”
(Briefly, it occurs to you that those sentences mean two completely different things, that they’re both true, and that either it’s Namjoon choosing to ignore the odd, heavy weight of the second one or you both are.)
You’re halfway out the door before you remember you were in the middle of a conversation.
You don’t notice his friends whispering.
You don’t notice his manager rolling his eyes.
You don’t notice the way Namjoon looks at you when he knows you’re not looking back.
And you surely don’t let yourself notice that both of you want more than you’re willing to give in return.
“Can you come over?” he asks, but it doesn’t quite come out like a question.
“I’m working, maybe a different time?”
It’s abundantly clear he hadn’t expected you to say no. He’s silent on the other end of the line for a moment before he lets out an aborted sigh.
“You can work whenever you want.”
Before you realize he’s serious, you laugh. “Yeah, and now is when I want to. You know how it is to get inspired.”
Namjoon huffs. “I’d still make time for you.”
It’s almost more absurd than the sentence before it. First, you know from firsthand experience that he wouldn’t, not really. Your “relationship”—or whatever you’re (not) calling it—revolves almost entirely around his schedule. And that’s fine with you, usually. It was expected, anyway. You don’t exactly drop everything to see him, but you haven’t been the best at keeping plans with the other people in your life, either. You don’t blame him for it, it’s just how things are, and it’s your own fault (at least partially) for bailing on your friends to “chase dick” as they so delicately put it. The second point is that you wouldn’t ask him to. If you don’t ask him to change for you, if you don’t need him to bend, then you never have to stop to ask yourself what the two of you are even doing.
As the static of the connection is drawn out like a fermata with neither of you willing to break it, you wonder if this is your panoply, the armor you don, one of the ways you’ve been protecting your own heart without realizing it.
“I wouldn’t ask you to,” you say, repeating it to yourself, admitting it to him.
“I know,” Namjoon agrees, but he sounds disappointed instead of conciliatory.
“I have to go.”
“Sure,” he says quietly before he ends the call. “Let me know when you have time.”
Namjoon is obsessed with time.
How much is left.
How much has passed.
How much until the next thing.
How much he’s wasted.
You think this is because he puts a deadline to his regret, says things like, “It’s been a year, I can’t worry about it anymore.”
It’s hard not to wonder what schedule he’s given whatever this thing is between you. Are you still regrettable? Is there a space between regrettable and forgettable you can build shelter in?
It makes him fill his time. He’s always doing something, likes to feel productive. Holds himself to an unspoken standard that you’re not even sure he could articulate if he needed to. He gets antsy when he has to relax, twitches and fidgets and fills the space with words.
Sometimes, after sex when you’re quiet and lax and content to just sit with him, he uses the time to write. He sits tall up in your bed and holds his notebook above your head where it rests in his lap. He says you help him organize his thoughts, says having you to bounce things off of gives him clarity, says you think of words like colors like he does and you know how he likes to paint. Says he gets his best work done in this time in between pleasure and sleep.
He hums to himself while he writes—you don’t even know if he knows he does it. Sometimes, it wakes you up from where you didn’t know you’d fallen asleep on top of him.
“Is it morning yet?” you slur, still mostly asleep.
“Relax, baby,” he whispers when you stir. “We’ve got time.”
You don’t break up, because there’s nothing tangible to break. It’s a quiet thing, without dramatics, but oh how you grieve.
It’s not linear. You’re not in a predictable pattern of feeling. One morning he doesn’t call, and you don’t even notice, but another makes you sob quietly in the corner of your studio, curled up under the window where he used to sit, like you can fuse yourself with the ghost of him.
There are days when it’s easier, days when it’s difficult. When you mourn the way the curve of his bicep felt under your fingertips or the future you never considered until it wasn’t an option anymore.
(You still don’t know if it ever was an option, but that’s the tricky thing—you can grieve for the things you had and also for those you didn’t. No one can stop you, Namjoon’s not there to pull you back to reality. He was never very good at that anyway.)
Some days, you wonder if he grieves, too. It would be easy to read interviews and read into things, it would be easy to assume every word, look, gesture is a window into his mind, but you try not to do that to yourself, try not to do it to him.
At four in the morning on a Saturday, when days without him have long turned into weeks, you mindlessly scroll through your phone, idly wondering what he might be doing at this time when he used to be with you.
“The quiet hours are all for us,” he would whisper into your skin, no distractions, no demands.
Those hours are infinitely louder in your mind without him there. So, you distract yourself, you look at every app and you get lost in reels and tiktoks and tweets and then you go back to instagram to see his story is updated. And you think twice before you do it, but you still click on it, curious and heartbroken and a little bit hoping he’s not already found someone new to spend daybreak with.
It’s just a song, an old one, a sad one. Text he added in small font across the bottom:
“Grief is love persevering,” he says.
In your corner, under the window, you cry over the silly quote for the both of you.
“Do you know about alpine sunflowers?”
You laugh as you put your phone on speaker and set it down next to you. You’re not laughing at him, and he knows it—you’re full of a particular fondness you only feel for him, one you especially feel when he’s thousands of miles away, busier than busy and running on no sleep, but still calling you to bullshit.
“No, tell me about them.”
“Okay,” he says, voice pitched up, a little excited, like he’s sitting up straighter and getting ready to tell you something wonderful. “So, they only grow high up in the alpine tundra. The Swiss Alps, the Rockies, you know what I mean?”
“What about the French Alps?” you tease.
Namjoon huffs. “There too, jagiya, but you’re missing the point.”
“Okay, make me see it, then.”
“I will if you’ll stop teasing.”
You do stop, not because he’s making an impeccable argument, but because he’s always going somewhere with things like this, and without realizing it, you’ve stumbled into a reality where you’d follow him anywhere.
“They grow slowly. ‘Cause of the snow and the subzero temperatures and the fact that there’s just not much up there for them. They take their time, you see?”
You’re starting to, your paintbrush dipping into a dusty yellow to test in a small corner of your canvas. You nod, forgetting he’s not there in the room with you, that you should speak if you actually want to answer him. He doesn’t care if you do or not, you know, not until he gets to the punchline, and sometimes not even then.
On the other end of the line, you hear him suck in a breath before he continues. “They save up everything: the sunlight and the water and they hoard it all. They're selfish little things, baby. Just these spindly stalks of nothing sucking up everything good out of the Earth.”
“Hmm,” you murmur so he knows you’re with him.
“But then, and this is the best part, then one day, after ten fucking years if you can believe that—after ten years do you know what happens?”
“Climate change?”
Namjoon ignores you now in favor of finishing his story. It’s fair enough, you suppose. “They bloom. Big and beautiful, brighter than all the other sunflowers like an explosion of little suns across the mountains.”
“That sounds beautiful,” you reply.
And you know what Namjoon is thinking. That their beauty comes at a cost, that he hasn’t quite untangled yet whether he loves those stupid flowers for taking what they need and becoming something incredible or if he despises them for waiting so long to do it, for keeping something so lovely to themselves. It’s not what he says, though. As you paint something that might be tangling green vines of selfish sunflowers across gesso, he surprises you.
“I wonder if in all relationships, someone is the sunflower and someone is the mountain.”
You can’t help but pause, because he might be right. One of you might take something from the other to become more beautiful, one of you might give up everything to be made more whole by the other, if even for a moment.
“Maybe they are,” you agree.
“You know what happens after the alpine sunflower blooms?” he asks, voice softer now, more tired as night turns into morning where he is.
“What happens, Joon-ah?”
Namjoon sighs into the phone, the mood has changed since he called you—and this isn’t unusual. He can be ebullient and he’s gorgeous when he’s happy and carefree, but it changes quickly sometimes depending on the circumstances, depending on how much he’s let himself think, how much time he’s spent alone.
“They die. They do all of that and they work hard for so long, and then they’re gone.”
Carefully, you ask, “You want to be the mountain, then?”
In the background, you can hear the rustle of sheets and the careful clacking of his glasses hitting the bedside table. He yawns, and you can picture the way he’s rubbing his palms over his face, pulling his shirt off before he dives all the way under the duvet, probably taking advantage of being alone to take up all the space he possibly can in the big hotel bed. He sounds half-asleep and sad when he finally answers you.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?” You put your brush down, stare at the small mess you’ve made.
“The mountain has it worse, she can only watch them go.”
He is everywhere, even when he’s not.
There are the obvious things: the ads with his face, the gum and coffee and candy with his picture on them, the music, his lyrics, playing in cafes and bars and pages and pages of his songs in every noraebang.
There are the private things, too. The reminders that are just for you.
You see him in the way the leaves change: reliable but not predictable.
You smell him after it rains, when you pass by cafes and smoking rooms and when you take the train to Yeosu just to remember the way the saltwater can make the air sting. You hear him every time you hear the train sail into the station at Yongsan and when you hear the river gently shove against its banks.
It’s a couple months after you meet him, and along that river, you walk a less-loved path. With all the words you know, you explain all that to a friend, one you’ve known a long time, who doesn’t know who you’re talking about as you try to describe the person who’s taken up all of your time and attention lately.
Because you can’t tell her anything about him, you tell her these things instead and you hope it’s enough for her to understand.
And maybe she does, maybe better than you do.
“Does that make sense?” you ask. “It’s hard to explain how much he is.”
“To you,” she says. “He’s that much to you.”
You hadn’t even considered that he wasn’t all of those things to everyone. It never even crossed your mind. It’s probably apparent that you’re mulling it over, trying to true it up with how you feel.
She shrugs with one shoulder and smiles, brings a finger up to smooth the wrinkle in your brow. “Don’t think about it too hard, yeah? Love is supposed to be simple.”
Those two words had always each seemed so big to you, to carry so much power on their own. It’s the first time you let yourself consider putting the words Namjoon and Love in the same sentence.
And in that moment, you know that if Namjoon is the changing leaf, you are the one that falls.
“Do you love me?” you ask—afraid to know the answer, more afraid of never knowing. You stare at unfinished bunches of sunflowers and handprints of pink and white borders that never got filled in. All of it undone, all of it paused. Abstracts in stop-motion waiting for… him to come back? You to get your shit together? Inspiration? What’s the difference, anyway, you think while you wait for him to speak.
He doesn’t answer right away, hums a little, clicks his tongue, things you can sense more than you can hear. It’s a rude way to start a phone call, especially when you haven’t spoken in a long time, especially when you’re not each other's to love.
Not anymore.
Not that you know if you ever were.
You need to know, you think. Questioning whether all of it even mattered is making you worse off than thinking it didn’t. Listening to him tell foreign interviewers he’s had a rough year, lost something great, was finding it hard to trust—himself, others—you, your brain supplies… it’s making you feel a little wild, a little reckless.
One drink past good decisions, you call, and when he answers unexpectedly, you forgo “hello” for “do you love me?”
You wait, expecting exasperation, complication, maybe a long and drawn out description of how maybe people can never know if they’re in love, if they have the capacity to love completely.
And then he surprises you.
“Of course I do,” he says, sounding soft and a little scared and more definitive than you’ve ever heard him. “You know that.”
“I didn’t,” you reply. Not to be argumentative, but because it’s true. Because you love him and you want him to be happy and you know he’ll never get it right if he thinks what he gave you was enough.
“I don’t think I knew then, either,” he concedes. “But I wish I had. I do now.”
“I miss you.”
“I know. But you did then, too.”
The laugh you let out is wry and wet with your tears, the ones you’re shedding for the you that did miss him even then, even when he was by your side, even when he was buried inside of you. “I’m lonely,” is what you say, too honest.
“I know. I am, too.”
There’s nothing to say to that, you think. Maybe this is where it really ends, a torn-open wound for both of you—you’ll paint it all in vivid acrylics, probably never finish it just to be ironic. And then Namjoon adds, “Can I come over?”
You reply quickly, a taste of his own medicine. “Maybe,” you say.
You should have never left, you mean.
He laughs then, watercolor yellow and orange joy dripping over the phone line. It’s bright and hopeful—you listen to him shrugging on a jacket and swearing out a curse when he runs into his dresser, rushing to get to you, scrambling for time—and it makes you decide that for once, with him by your side, you might finish the picture.
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-ˏˋ . . . ⇢ ˗ˏˋ CRUSH HDCS ࿐ྂ Pt. 1.....
WARNING: × pure fluff in my opinion
SUMMARY: just some idiots with a crush...you :)
CHARACTERS: Aether, Albedo, Al-haitham, Amber, Arlecchino, Ayaka, Ayato & Baizhu x F!Reader
WORD COUNT: 1.537
AETHER
ᯓᡣ𐭩 Paimon is so done with his constant ranting and crying about you
ᯓᡣ𐭩 She had to stop herself from telling you so often like "Just PLEASE date him already" because she couldn't just fall into her besties back like that
ᯓᡣ𐭩 you would think he doesn't really like you cause he's all quite. Wrong, he actually jusz tries to cope with his rising heat and nervousness around you
ᯓᡣ𐭩 did he once tell you that you smell nice even tho you were sweating lile a sinner in church? Yes
ᯓᡣ𐭩 did he also tell you that you look a bit different and like you haven't slept good after a haircut?...yes
ᯓᡣ𐭩 listen, he was concerned for you-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 everything was so embarrassing for him he thought you hate him now--- well, you didn't. Its hard not to find this weird and awkward ball of sunshine nice
ᯓᡣ𐭩 he also helps you out a lot, no matter whats the issue he's ready to help. And Paimon is the third wheel
ᯓᡣ𐭩 sometimes when he's nervous and talks to you he like suddenly needs to swallow down spit cause it gets stuck in his throat?? Idk how to explain it but i have this issue lol and its so hard to cover up the swallowing cause then people know youre nervous-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 literally once walked into a wall because he was looking at you. Luckily no one saw...except Paimon--she won't let him forget that ever
ᯓᡣ𐭩 speaking of Paimon, bro literally asked her for advice, and she was useful? Hey, look. Shes more than just emergency food-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 she was like, "If you truly love someone, you cook them something good! Love goes through the stomach!"
ᯓᡣ𐭩 and thats why he desperately cooks for you every day---just put Paimon out of her misery and kiss him already
ALBEDO
ᯓᡣ𐭩 has no idea how and why it happened but he won't complain, you are pretty so-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 kinda takes it as an opportunity to study love a bit lol. Its not like he's dumb, far from that, he knows what hes feeling and why he feels attracted to you.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 but somehow he can't tell you, words fail him to explain why although he knows
ᯓᡣ𐭩 is confused and is irritated lol
ᯓᡣ𐭩 did tell Succrose about it and my girl can hardly keep secrets-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 oh and like around a week after he noticed his crush on you he confessed
ᯓᡣ𐭩 he's pretty blunt and honest, straightforward if you will.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 there's honestly not much to say, he knows he likes you, also probably knows it's mutual, logic conclusion would be that he confesses so you two can consider a relationship after some time
ᯓᡣ𐭩 easy??? Like what's not to get???
AL-HAITHAM
ᯓᡣ𐭩 the strongest feeling he ever had for someone else was a book character-and that's also pretty rare cause he doesn't read fiction he only reads facts-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 treats you normally with a sprinkle of kindness
ᯓᡣ𐭩 you don't notice, no one would notice. Good for Al-Haitham cause ew what if people realize hes just a regular human being?? Can't have that
ᯓᡣ𐭩 would tell you to take breaks and eat an apple or other fruits in those breaks so you can concentrate better afterwards. Oh and take a breath of fresh air
ᯓᡣ𐭩 keeps the bitch face on. Only drops it when you're not looking.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 finds it incredibly cute when you play with your hair or bite your lip. Your concentration is adorable...
ᯓᡣ𐭩 if you read like him, he would consider reading one of your favorite books, even if it's stupid and not his thing at all. He wants a good reason to talk to you
ᯓᡣ𐭩 has no idea how to get out of the "I'm so fucking cool" bs to actually get closer to you without seeming cringe or needy
ᯓᡣ𐭩 feelings aren't his thing but hey, he trys. Just pay more attention and maybe you make it easier for him by doing the first step
AMBER
ᯓᡣ𐭩 nah cause she's so honest about it-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 probably all Mondstadt and their granny's know that Amber has a crush on you, except for you....dumbass
ᯓᡣ𐭩 she always asks you if you wanna join her on god knows what adventures
ᯓᡣ𐭩 she also always packs lunch for you
ᯓᡣ𐭩 like i said, she is pretty vocal about it and shows it quite well that she has an interest in you....and youre just brushing it off as kindness
ᯓᡣ𐭩 always ready to help! And she doesn't even need a thank you. Helping you is enough to make her happy, seeing your relieved is all she needs.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 gifts you flowers on a regular basis because they're just as pretty as you ♡
ᯓᡣ𐭩 she's so straightforward about her crush on you it's insane. People think she's dating you already, well wrong--
ᯓᡣ𐭩 big talk and actions but when it comes to beinh very vocal about her feelings she shuts down-she would stutter and blush not knowing what to say-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 like, pls stop being so oblivious to her attempts and just tell her you like her--then she'll confess too!
ARLECCHINO
ᯓᡣ𐭩 look, she's a busy woman (father), she doesn't have time for stupid crushes. She'll either tell you immediately once she figured it out, or just waits till the feelings disappear over time.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 why? If she is uncertain that this would work out with a fatui harbinger, then she wouldn't confess at all. You won't notice a thing.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 but if she does feel like it could work out, maybe not immediately because you need time...and yeah maybe she needs to know a 100% too, she would court you (??)
ᯓᡣ𐭩 presenting you the finest things from all nations. Also giving you ifts from your home region cause...well maybe you miss it? And if you're from Fontaine she gives you only the most expensive shit hidden from all normal ordinary people-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 she sneaks her way in your heart ngl-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 and if she ever sees you with one of the things she gave you, she would make sure others know. Who knows who might have an interest in you.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 would also make some space in her schedule just for you. Lets you know too. No, not to make you feel bad, nahhh. She wants you to know how important you are to her.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 and that she will always have time for you no matter what.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 she's kinda advertising herself. "Look, I'm the baddest bitch around."
AYAKA
ᯓᡣ𐭩 also makes space in her very busy schedule just for you. And if she can't find the time so you both can be alone, she takes you with her to her appointments and everything.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 wants her brothers 'ok' for it all. She wouldn't feel quite comfy if Ayato wouldn't like you. Thomas opinion is also very important to her.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 if she every plays this weird cooking game with you, she trys to make it tame. She doesn't want you too disgusted or near throwing up cause then she'd feel bad
ᯓᡣ𐭩 and also trys cooking for you normally. She trys ok, she's getting better and better. Takes this as an excuse to cook your favorite meals.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 dances with you! She's shy about it but she does. Ayaka teaches you her favorite dances and moves, and would get quite close to you by doing this...plus for her
ᯓᡣ𐭩 but besides this she's very shy about her crush on you and won't admit it very fast. Even after months she wouldn't dare say a word about it to you or hint anything to drastic.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 tbh, it has to be you who would need to make the first step lol
AYATO
ᯓᡣ𐭩 very obvious...I mean...he gives you flowers, jewelry, new clothes. He takes you to events or dinners, important meetings. Lets you stay in the Kamisato estate for free. Bitch you even have your own room??
ᯓᡣ𐭩 ITS SO OBVIOUS
ᯓᡣ𐭩 i can't tell you more, except, just...just talk with him about it. Confront him and say, "yes" that's all he wants to hear from you.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 and see you happy ofc
BAIZHU
ᯓᡣ𐭩 if Chansheng can keep her mouth shut he wouldn't tell you at all. Or at least not so fast.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 if you know, you know. Baizhus story is...something. i won't spoiler tho
ᯓᡣ𐭩 because of that he needs to be very sure about it all. He can't just jump into something that might not work out at all or have no future in the beginning.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 he would show his interest with nice little gestures. Giving you medicine for free, helping your loved ones when sick also for free, smiling just a bit more at you or teaching you about herbs and all.
ᯓᡣ𐭩 he's very gentle with you, scared he might break you. In truth it's actually him who would break--
ᯓᡣ𐭩 Qiqi would notice, she's a smart girl ofc she would. Yeah she knew you two were a thing before you two knew lol
ᯓᡣ𐭩 oh yeah and Changsheng blew it all-
ᯓᡣ𐭩 "Your hands wouldn't shake so much if you wouldn't love her"
TAGLIST ♡
@hehothrowawayfae @lucienbarkbark @ryu--19 @theblades @rikasurl
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